Hypothalamic neuropeptides will be studied due to the variety of specific and potent effects that these endogenous peptides have on the central nervous system. These peptides will be studied because of the enormous promise for elucidating physiological, perhaps pathological roles and even for a treatment of various neurological, endocrine and gastro-intestinal disorders. Both rats and commercially available hypothalmic preparations will be the source for the peptides in this study. High performance liquid chromatographic techniques for peptide separation and purification will be applied for extraction and purification of the hypothalamic neuropeptides. Appropriate chemical derivatives will be synthesized to confer thermal stability and volatility to the peptides. Acylation, permethylation and reduction techniques will be applied to the purified peptides. The amino acid sequences of the chemically derivatized oligopeptides will be obtained by using low resolution, high resolution and field desorption mass spectrometry. The biological activity of the HPLC-fractions will be evaluated by the amount of radioimmunoassayable growth hormone, prolactin, thyroid stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone released from a superfusion system which contains dispersed anterior pituitary cells. These studies are consonant with the long-term goals of the Laboratory: to develop chemical and instrumental methodology to obtain the amino acid sequence of purified, natural, intact oligopeptides of a size amenable to the limits of mass spectrometry; to develop peptide profiles of hypothalamic and other CNS tissues; to supply qualitative and quantitative estimates of hypothalamic releasing and inhibiting factors in a dependable, reproducible and rapid manner.